Orfeo

by Richard Powers

Hemlines rise and fall, but the present is forever convinced it has found the Tailor’s pattern.

Zig when they think you’ll zag. Creation’s Rule Number Two. What’s Number One? Els asks, willing to be this bent soul’s straight man. Zag when they think you’ll zig.

A good melody was a miracle, with all the surprise inevitability of a living thing.

Four weeks earlier, a quartet of passenger planes turned the dream of the present into a greasy plume.

We’re entitled to nothing, and soon to inherit.